Agile Pushing the Limits of Productivity.

100 Years ago the Great War came to an end.

November marks the centennial of the end of the First World War.  The Western Front of Europe was a muddy ruin.  Germany transformed into a republic in the aftermath of defeat.  Communists took control of Russia, and the old order of world affairs, unchanged since the collapse of Napoleon, was turned inside out.  I doubt any of the survivors of the “Great War,” could imagine what the world would look like in a century.  To us, life during the First World War would look familiar.  Machine guns, anti-biotics, and automobiles existed and played an essential part in the war.  To people from that time, our contemporary world resembles science fiction with our smartphones, air travel, nuclear weapons, and medical advances.  One hundred years is a long time and the pace of change is moving swifter.  We live in an agile world, and we better start adjusting. 

If you look at consumption figures since the First World War, the United States and the rest of the world can feed, educate and clothe more people than any other time in human history.  We are awash in money, and the global economy makes it possible to manufacture more wealth today than at any additional time in history.  The main reason for this explosion of wealth and prosperity is twofold; first, technology and automation have made it possible to manufacture items at the cost of pennies, the other reason is productivity per worker has increased geometrically.  We live in a world where Moors’ law trumps Marxist theory or the wealth of nations.

It is possible to create products around the world with teams in India, Ireland, and the United States.  In a global economy work no longer sleeps as it can shift around the world.  Our communications and technology are outstanding.  The way we manage technology resembles the time of the Pharaohs.  Large groups of people were forced to collaborate, often against their will, to satisfy the desires of a monarch.  The management of projects has not improved since the pyramids.  Glance around a contemporary corporation, and you see projects being managed in the same primitive fashion.  Instead of whips and drums to motivate workers, spreadsheets and Gantt charts are used to keep the labor moving forward. 

Smart people gathered together to write the agile manifesto as a way to come up with a sustainable, sane, and satisfying way to do work.  Waste is slashed, and more value delivered to customers as a bonus.  It was a merger between the needs of the business community and how humans work.  The alliance is imperfect.  Dark Scrum and Fake Agile are everywhere.  The distribution of the productivity surge is uneven.  Finally, we have bumped up against the upper limit of automation and technological advancement.  The productivity figures for the last twenty years will reveal this challenge.

Modern corporations are the last vestiges of feudal culture in our current society.  Executives act like royalty and increasingly perpetuate their privilege through networks of wealth and education for their children.  Culture considers the middle managers or professionals who make these whims a reality waste.  Finally, we squeeze every drop of productivity from the people doing the work.  It is a cycle of abuse which is self-reinforcing.  It is also an obstacle to increasing productivity.

Agile and Scrum do not promise to get people to work faster.  Instead, agile techniques promise to interact with the customer in more rapid cycles.  Personal agendas, waste, and bureaucracy disappear as the people who do the work come in contact with the people who purchase the product or service.  It is a threat to the current way corporations operate.

The structure of a large global business is becoming an impediment to the productivity of the people who work for them.  If we are going to match the growth of the last 100 years, we must change how business works.  It is why I joined the agile reformation and why I continue to fight my lonely struggle to make work better.  I want my descendants to have the same wonder I have over the progress we have made in a century.

Until next time.

A Year in the Life of a Scrum Master

Sharpen the saw, regularly.

Any scrum master worth their weight in salt, should take time out of their busy careers and take stock.  The book, “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” calls this practice “sharpening the saw.”  It is a chance to review the successes and failures of the recent past and see if you have gained any wisdom along the way.  I do not do it as often as I should.  The last year has been a crazy ride, and I want to share with you a few things I have learned.

A year ago, I left LSC communications. I was profoundly unhappy and filled with rage and contempt.  During my fifth anniversary, my manager joked, “Ed has been dragging this organization kicking and screaming to become more agile.”  I was an effort I was often fighting by myself. I was self-medicating with alcohol and over-eating to deal with the stress.  I was also making below-market rates for my profession.  I took the first opportunity offered to me to leave.  Three weeks later, I was cast aside like a used piece of facial tissue.  It was a valuable lesson.  If an offer is too good to be true, it probably is.

In the first quarter of the year, I worked for a non-profit which wanted to become agile.  I was hungry for a fresh start.  I let my hunger blind me to some distinct realities.  The organization was not serious about agile.  The firm would not hire or appoint product owners.  The managers would not share power with their teams.  Finally, my immediate manager wanted me to shut my mouth and maintain the Jira board rather than coach.  The second lesson learned, do not let hunger blind you to a no-win situation, which will further stunt your career.

I would spend the summer months looking for work and keeping my spirits up.  I could not have done it if I did not have the support of my friends, my family, and an understanding girlfriend.  Jobs come and go, but when you die, the only people who will mourn you are the people who loved you.  It is doubtful your boss or the VP of engineering will show up unless you neglected to check your code back into source control.

Finally, when I had a new opportunity, I set aside my preconceived notions and took time to learn about what works for my client.  It is not a mistake that the creator gave each person two ears and one mouth.  We need to listen to others with a frequency of two to one.  Learn the names of your colleagues and their children.  Find out how to make coffee that everyone in the office will drink.  Learn where the pain points exist and find out if you can fix them.  Share the values and principles of the agile manifesto and then be an example for others.

Plenty of things can happen in a year.  I feel like a different person. I am older and a touch wiser.  I want to bring that knowledge to other software developers and agilests.  I am grateful you are along for the ride.

Until next time.

Emotions are Intentional on Your Agile Team

Existential thinkers have plenty to say about emotions.

I have been busy working on a large project.  My life has become a dull whirlwind of train rides, conference calls, and e-mail chains, which never end.  The days tick by as we draw closer to our deadline.  Everyone is feeling the pressure.  As the scrum master and coach, I have to maintain a semblance of grace under pressure.  If I do not the team will continue to careen out of control, and the project will fail.  I have talked about emotions plenty of times on this blog.  Today, I want to discuss the intentionality of emotions and what it means for your teams.

I have been reading plenty of philosophy books on the train, and I have become intrigued with post-modern and existential philosophy.  In particular, the trio of Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Albert Camus.  Two of these writers earned the Nobel Prize in literature.  The third gave birth to contemporary feminist thought.  The three of them survived the horrors of the great depression and the Second World War.  In the aftermath, they were authoring a philosophy centered on individuals and the life choices they make.  Instead of grand narratives of history like Marx or Hegel, existential thinkers wrote about freedom and opportunity.  The existentialists spend time discussing psychology.  Each of them pushes back against the leading theories of psychoanalysis and attempt to provide a better way to discuss emotions.

As psychoanalysis grew in popularity and respectability, people began to accept many of its presumptions about human nature.  A central hypothesis was the concept of the “unconscious mind.”  The unconscious was a mental black box where we kept our repressed memories, emotions and irrational portions of ourselves.  Therapy could help us unlock some of the mysteries of the unconscious, but it would never be able to untangle the numerous tangled threads of repression, trauma, anxiety, and emotion each of us possesses.  If someone was easily angered the psychoanalysis would say there was nothing to be done because emotions are part of the unconscious mind and it will require extensive therapy to address the complicated issues causing the anger.

Existential thinkers reject this extreme version of the unconscious mind. To an existentialist, humans do have a conscious mind and an unconscious mind, but the unconscious is not a black box that cannot be understood.  Instead, the unconscious mind contains emotions, memories and hidden elements of behavior but instead of them obeying irrational processes they are rational and intentional depending outside stimulus.

For example, you are in a retrospective, and some stories did not get completed.  The inability to get work done becomes the main topic of the retrospective.  Two developers are upset by the discussion.  An existentialist would say this is natural because the two developers did or did not do something which caused the sprint to fail.  The feeling of anger, disappointment, or anxiety is a logical and rational response to failure.  If you are a good enough coach or scrum master the team should be able to express those emotions healthily.  One developer should be able to admit they are struggling writing automated tests.  The other developer should be able to confess that they do not have time to help the other developer improve their testing skills.  In a condition of psychological safety and openness, the team can work out how they can avoid failure like this in the future.

The scrum master should ask “What” style questions instead of “Why” centered questions.  When someone is angry, ask, “What is making you feel this way.”  It is less judgmental than asking why.  Ask people what they are going to do to change and what they can do when they feel angry or upset.  It is not easy, but it guides you and the people on your team to take ownership of emotional behavior.  It means that emotions are still irrational and exhausting, but the reasons we have them are not.  To the existentialist, a feeling serves a real need in each human.

As a scrum master and coach, it is up to you to understand emotions and how they are natural and rational responses to real situations.  It is up to you to ask questions about what is triggering emotions instead of why emotions are triggered.  Finally, a coach or scrum master needs to help others take ownership of emotions instead of dismissing them because emotions affect the team and the individual struggling to express them.

Until next time.